IE Standard vs Quirks Mode: Pros and Cons?

lzr

Novice

Posts: 28

3+ Months Ago

Hi,What in your opinion are pros and cons of these two modes? If my site looks fine in IE8 compatibility (or quirks) mode, but a layout is distorted in standard mode, is it worth efforts re-designing vs. simply forcing browser's compatibility mode [by putting a corresponding Doctype or X-UA-Compatible http-equiv header]?

tastysite

Proficient

Posts: 349

Loc: Brighouse, West Yorkshire, England

3+ Months Ago

yes, IE keeps a list of sites that have to use quirks mode to work (black list) this may effect how sites like bing rank your site and even if not its a pain for people as some people will not know to click the quirks button

lzr

Novice

Posts: 28

3+ Months Ago

tastysite wrote:

yes, IE keeps a list of sites that have to use quirks mode to work (black list) this may effect how sites like bing rank your site and even if not its a pain for people as some people will not know to click the quirks button

People would not need to do anything- as I mentioned, you can specify in your html code that the page should be rendered by IE in compatibility mode. Do you have any reference that quirks mode indeed affects bing SERP position?

tastysite

Proficient

Posts: 349

Loc: Brighouse, West Yorkshire, England

3+ Months Ago

lzr wrote:

People would not need to do anything- as I mentioned, you can specify in your html code that the page should be rendered by IE in compatibility mode.

Mabe so, however we are on IE 8 now so what happens when IE9 comes out? after a while your site will become out of date and using compatibility mode will not encourage you to re-code your site to new stands, and when Microsoft do remove it your site will no longer work

lzr wrote:

Do you have any reference that quirks mode indeed affects bing SERP position?

No but take a look at this from wikipedia

Quote:

Microsoft maintains a list of websites that have been reported to have problems in IE8's standards mode, known as the compatibility view list. When a user enables this list IE8 will render the websites in the list using its compatibility view mode.[63] The list is occasionally updated to add newly reported problematic websites, as well as to remove websites whose owners have requested removal. The Internet Explorer team also tests the websites on the list for compatibility issues and removes those where none are found.[64]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IE8#Compatibility_mode now while it says nothing about bing you can be shore that the list will be used for something...

lzr

Novice

Posts: 28

3+ Months Ago

tastysite wrote:

Mabe so, however we are on IE 8 now so what happens when IE9 comes out? after a while your site will become out of date and using compatibility mode will not encourage you to re-code your site to new stands, and when Microsoft do remove it your site will no longer work...

This of course is possible, although I can't believe MS and others would abandom millions sites designed for old standards. The problem as I see it, no matter what you do, in standard mode your page may look differently in different IE versions because each version understands standard mode slightly different. In standard mode you'll find yourself in never ending chasing of new MS releases.

graphixboy

Control + Z

Posts: 1826

Loc: In the Great White North

3+ Months Ago

I think your better off designing for all other "Grade A" browsers using their HTML/CSS rendering standards and then adding in specific tweaks for each version of IE regardless if it ends up in standards or quirks mode. This is probably the most future proof plan available unless you know that your audience is only going to be using a specific version of IE.